Supporting Collaborative Inquiry, Engineering and Career Exploration with Water (Water SCIENCE)

In Supporting Collaborative Inquiry, Engineering and Career Exploration with Water (Water SCIENCE), middle school students from southern Arizona, Central Valley in California, southeastern Pennsylvania, and eastern Massachusetts complete hands-on science and engineering activities, receive guidance and instruction from undergraduate and graduate student mentors, interact online with STEM professionals, and learn about careers in environmental conservation and engineering while investigating their community's local water resources.

After completing their water quality assessments, students conduct classroom engineering projects that model the technologies used to clean, conserve, and manage their local water resources. These activities include the cleaning of water by physical means (e.g., filtration), chemical treatments (e.g., pH balancing), and biological methods (e.g., plant root uptake). In addition, students engineer water conservation strategies, such as approaches for reducing household water consumption and systems for collecting and recirculating rainwater.

Through a series of videos, students have the opportunity observe STEM professionals working in the water field and learn about the critical roles played by scientists, engineers, and other professionals in maintaining healthy water resources, as well as the educational pathways leading to these careers. As a capstone experience, students engage in a role-playing exercise involving a simulated water emergency, such as a drought or an oil or chemical spill.

Supporting Collaborative Inquiry, Engineering and Career Exploration with Water (Water SCIENCE)

In Supporting Collaborative Inquiry, Engineering and Career Exploration with Water (Water SCIENCE), middle school students from southern Arizona, Central Valley in California, southeastern Pennsylvania, and eastern Massachusetts complete hands-on science and engineering activities, receive guidance and instruction from undergraduate and graduate student mentors, interact online with STEM professionals, and learn about careers in environmental conservation and engineering while investigating their community's local water resources.

After completing their water quality assessments, students conduct classroom engineering projects that model the technologies used to clean, conserve, and manage their local water resources. These activities include the cleaning of water by physical means (e.g., filtration), chemical treatments (e.g., pH balancing), and biological methods (e.g., plant root uptake). In addition, students engineer water conservation strategies, such as approaches for reducing household water consumption and systems for collecting and recirculating rainwater.

Through a series of videos, students have the opportunity observe STEM professionals working in the water field and learn about the critical roles played by scientists, engineers, and other professionals in maintaining healthy water resources, as well as the educational pathways leading to these careers. As a capstone experience, students engage in a role-playing exercise involving a simulated water emergency, such as a drought or an oil or chemical spill.

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Amy Kamarainen

Hello, Water SCIENCE team. This project looks like an exciting way of engaging students in inquiry as well as helping to build understanding of science career pathways. I look forward to hearing more as your project evolves! Can you offer a description of how, if at all, you're connecting students across the regions that are participating in this project? Do students have opportunities to share or compare data from CA, PA, AZ and MA?

Saadia Baloch

Co-Presenter

May 15, 2017 | 09:44 a.m.

Hello Amy,

There are two major ways that we have connected students across the regions: through shared data visualization and through the videoconference capstone project.

The shared data visualization is facilitated by the iSENSE system (isenseproject.org), a web system for sharing and visualizing scientific data which is ntended to be a resource for middle school and high school science, math, and engineering instruction. Students can see the data points entered by all other student groups for the various water testing values. They can sort by class, teacher, state, or view all data. I can point you to more specific examples of the data visualization if you like.

As a capstone project, Zoom videoconferences between pairs of classrooms allowed classes in different states to share their local experiences by presenting a video postcard, and then talking live about their findings.

The incredible Capstone discussions between the varying sites included middle school students that had never seen rain in CA talking with students that had just experienced a significant snow fall in PA. By the time that some of the schools connected this spring, some of the sites in CA were experiencing their first rain in almost 8 years! The rich discussion about watershed and erosion was amazing.

Sue Doubler

Facilitator

May 15, 2017 | 09:38 p.m.

Water Science Team,

How many of us as adults really know our own watershed? Love that this is the focus of students' study and that they are also exposed to related careers through videos of scientists. Could you say more about your design for the scientist videos and how the videos are used? Is the educational career pathway part of the video itself?

Saadia Baloch

Co-Presenter

May 15, 2017 | 11:30 p.m.

Hello Sue,

The educational career pathway is introduced in two different ways: First, the Water SCIENCE activities have several insets with text that introduces different water related careers, and then pose a question about them. For example, there is a description of a "Water Quality Scientist" with Qualifications, Salary, and Coursework info. There is also a question to be answered "Is there a local government agency or company where you could be an intern to explore this career?"

Then later on when the teacher introduces the Water Scientist videos, each different scientist talks about what area they have a degree in, and what they were interested in that got them to this position.

Currently the Water Scientist videos were shown after the kids had done all the water testing and filtering activities, but that was due to the timing of their production. They might be fun for the kids to watch earlier on.

Sue Doubler

Facilitator

May 17, 2017 | 03:38 p.m.

Saadia, that's really impressive. How wonderful to include companies where students might be able to intern. I wonder if doing the scientist videos post testing might stick more. Students might see the nuances in what scientists do that might be missed if they haven't experienced the tests themselves. Certainly interesting to try it both ways and see.

Sue, recently with GIS easily available in a web browser, students can quickly see their watershed using Model My Watershed from the Stroud Water Research Center (SWRC) even on mobile devices. This is a tool used in the initial Water SCIENCE activity What affects your watershed? Model My Watershed is also available at https://app.wikiwatershed.org/.

Anyone in the lower 48 states can use their address of their school and place the address of your school in the Search bar. Select the HUC (Hydrologic Unit Code) 12 basin boundary in the drop-down menu for boundary type. Click the satellite (Google Hybrid or ESRI World Imagery) image overlay. Click on your school to identify your watershed boundaries. You may need to zoom in/out to view all of the businesses, land cover types (farm, turf grass, forest, etc.), and local waterways within your watershed boundary.

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Found helpful:Saadia Baloch

Sue Doubler

Facilitator

May 17, 2017 | 03:46 p.m.

Carolyn, just recently was surprised to learn that 40% of the Mystic Watershed is covered in rooftop or concrete. There is so much I don't know about my own watershed.

It strikes me that the audience for your program (or aspects of it) could be entire communities--adults, young people, town leaders learning together. It is now so easy to study (with data) one's own local environment. Is our view of who learners too limited?

Precisely! The students can become citizen scientists share their results with the larger community. The iSENSE project and Innovative Technology in Science Inquiry (ITSI) portal is free for use by schools so they can display and share data in a secure way. Stroud Water Research Center that has developed Model My Watershed (MMW) with Azavea are supporting GIS in classrooms using the Site Storm model with this NSF-funded project. Another source of funding is the William Penn Foundation for MMW that has provided additional funding to add the Watershed Multi-year model side of software. The Watershed Multi-year model is specifically used by professionals and citizen scientist groups to look for long term trends. Both of these models are available to the students within the version provided in the ITSI portal. The Water SCIENCE curriculum uses only the Site Storm model at this time.

Deborah Hanuscin

Facilitator

May 16, 2017 | 12:51 p.m.

Great emphasis on related career paths! To what extent are you also addressing how this applies to students' lives outside of careers- e.g., as citizens? Do you have connections to current events or legislative actions

Great Questions! Giving students knowledge and access to the scientific tools needed to make informed decisions is empowering. One tool that we used in the project is Model My Watershed https://app.wikiwatershed.org/ This free online watershed modeling application gives students the ability to model their watershed and the ability to assess the impacts of their actions.

For example in one of the Water SCIENCE classrooms, the students talked about a building project proposed at their school. The school is considering "paving" the front lawn to increase parking spaces. One 5th grade student used Model My Watershed to see the impact of this land cover change on the watershed. Concerned with the result, she returned to Model My Watershed to explore how she could "mitigate" the impact of the additional impervious surface. She decided that the school's roof often leaks in heavy rain so they need a new roof. What if they added a green roof to the school instead of a traditional roof? Using Model My Watershed she modeled how adding a green roof could mitigate the impact of the new parking lot. She shared this information with her principal. She had the knowledge and the data to inform her actions. Now that is exciting science!

On of the additional features in Model My Watershed is in the layer controls of this web-based GIS. Users can add boundary layers including Congressional Districts and School Districts across the entire lower 48 states. In PA user can also add the PA Municipality boundary layers.

Deborah Hanuscin

Facilitator

May 18, 2017 | 09:30 a.m.

What great tools and resources to help schools tailor the learning to their specific locality! Thanks for sharing!

Adrienne Groff

Graduate Student

May 16, 2017 | 10:04 p.m.

What a great project! Is this project geared to a certain age group? Also, how are schools able to access this resource?

Saadia Baloch

Co-Presenter

May 16, 2017 | 11:23 p.m.

The project is geared towards the middle school grades, but has been used with kids as young as 5th grade as an afterschool program. The resources are freely available through Concord Consortium's ITSI (Innovative Technology in Science Inquiry) portal https://itsi.portal.concord.org/itsi

The web-based GIS Model My Watershed is also free and available for anyone to use, embedded into the curriculum or accessed separately at https://wikiwatershed.org/.

If teachers are looking for curriculum for high school students they can go to the ITSI portal and also use the High School Environmental Science activities which are part of a related NSF funded project called Teaching Environmental Sustainability - Model My Watershed.

I love that this program includes such a meaningful context for student learning AND integrates science and engineering that does more than "engineering as engaging, fun activity" -- something that limits deeper understanding of the interplay of science and engineering. There is an aspect that addresses careers -- but I am wondering if there is any part of the project that leverages culturally relevant connections or teacher support materials that identify culturally relevant pedagogical strategies to help teachers? There is such great opportunity here for discussions of social justice and culturally sustaining practices!

I love seeing how engaged the students are! You are so right when you say the kids "want to learn." When they find meaning, they appear to be fully engaged. It looks like the adults' enthusiasm is transferring to the students. Thank you for such an important and amazing project. Local, place-based education seems to matter as a lot of literature also tells us. I wonder what measurement techniques you are using.